Finance

5 important things happening in South Africa today

Staff Writer

 ·4 Nov 2019

Here’s what is happening in and affecting South Africa today:

• Finance minister Tito Mboweni’s plan to sell off Eskom’s power stations to raise billions has been shelved. This was revealed in the latest draft of his economic plan for the country, published shortly after his medium-term budget speech last week. The plan had received plenty of negative feedback, particularly from political spheres and worker unions. A new addition to the plan is the inclusion of land reform policies. [City Press]

• The National Prosecuting Authority’s Asset Forfeiture Unit has recovered almost R12 billion from the proceeds of corruption over the last 5 years. While the NPA is still struggling to recover money from the state capture saga – which is still a work in progress – many other acts of corruption in the country have not escaped so smoothly. It is currently working on 319 cases valued at another R30 billion. [Mail & Guardian]

• Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan says he disagrees with ratings firm Moody’s decision to put South Africa’s outlook to negative, saying that government has shown that there is political capital to change things around in the country. However, while Gordhan’s position is based on potential for opportunity, Moody’s moves was based on financial reality. The group said that government has so far proven incapable of getting its finances under control. [ENCA]

• Former president Jacob Zuma is again delaying his 15 year old corruption case, having waited until the very last possible day to apply for leave to appeal the court ruling that dismissed his attempt to get the charges dropped. Zuma is accused of accepting bribes in the 1990s arms deal, and is facing 16 charges of fraud, corruption and racketeering. [TimesLive]

• The South African rand rose in thin Asian trading on Monday as investors were seemingly relieved that Moody’s had only downgraded the ratings outlook for the country’s debt and did not cut it to junk as some had feared. On Monday the rand was trading at R14.84 to the dollar, R19.20 to the pound and R16.58 to the euro.